Notes - May 14th, 2007

The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
May 14th, 2007

Senators and Officers present:, Cadge-Moore, Capitolo, Chenoweth, Cole, Coleman, Dolen, Gallegos, Glapion, Goodwin, Guevara, Hearn, Jensen-Sullivan, Joplin, Kessler, Kramer, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Lizardi-Folley, Miller, Osborne, Paicius, Raffaelli Schaffer, Setziol,Walton, Winters, and Zill
Senators and Officers absent: Bambhania and Cordero,
DASB:
Classified Senate: Olivia Patlan
Administrative Liaison:  Christina Espinosa-Pieb
Guests: Brian Murphy, Jeanine Hawk, John Swennson, and Marisa Spatafore
Curriculum Co Chair:  Anu Khanna
[NOTE: Item numbers are reflective of agenda numbers in the order they
are actually taken up at the meeting.]
The meeting was called to order at 2:30 a quorum being present.
I. Approval of Agenda and Notes: The agenda was approved as distributed.
The notes of May 7th were approved as distributed after the attendance section was corrected.
V. Needs and Confirmations:  Chenoweth took the group through the extremely long list of needs.  Hearn mentioned that the length of the list would require special attention at the May 21st  meeting and that decisions might have to be made regarding committee viability.  There is a Tenure Review training for faculty who have not served in the last two years.  There were no Confirmations.
II.  Joint Meeting with Senior Administrators:   The item was subdivided into four topics, Strategic Planning/enrollment, Governance and Organization possibilities, Senate questions and concerns, and Pedagogy and Student Learning Outcomes.
-   Strategic Planning/enrollment -  Funding for Early alert and Summer program initiatives should be available as soon as completed plans are in place. The Cultural Competency component will start in June and then expand in the fall including September 17th-19th.  Multiple approaches over multiple phases will be used.  Murphy answered questions about local, regional, and state level enrollment shifts by outlining the extensive research underway locally and by characterizing regional and state level information and analysis as very inadequate.
-   Governance and Organization possibilities -  Strategic Planning efforts have touched, at least conceptually, on organization and governance.  Proposals for some changes were said to be coming.  Issues were raised about the effectiveness of the current structure and processes, in particular the work of the Planning and Budgeting teams and the parallel governance structure implications of the unofficial group "The Deans".  It was opined that the college as an organism is not particularly good at either process or the communications necessary for good processes.
- Senate questions and concerns – these were evidently exhausted for the time being during the discussion of organization and governance since Hearn elicited no response when she asked for other questions or concerns.
-  Pedagogy and Student Learning Outcomes -  The time for wishing that we wouldn't have to do anything about Student Learning Outcomes appears to be at an end.  As many as five faculty members will be attending a state Senate workshop in preparation for work by many faculty.  Perhaps most importantly, this topic as well as implementation language do provide an opportunity for expanded discussions on pedagogy and the general question of "What do we want our students to know?"  Murphy and former Senate President (now to be interim Vice President for Instruction) John Swennson shared how impressed they were with the focus of several Vietnamese Universities in this regard and mentioned the energy existing at these and Chinese institutions for communication and exchange.  The item ended with commendation by Murphy of the Senate's annual Teaching and Learning conference and a pledge by him of support for work on pedagogy and Student Learning Outcomes.
III.  Academic Senate Election Committee: Setziol facilitated an exposition of the events that need to occur in the annual Senate Elections and their relative timing.
The group decided to hold the election June 5th and 6th.  Kramer and Guevara volunteered to comprise the committee.  Three offices will be open to faculty beginning with a notice devised by Kramer and Guevara.  The positions are:  President, Part Time Representative at Large A (two years), and Part Time Representative at Large B (one year).  The announcement of openings is due the week of May 21st, with potential candidates having one week to submit written statements of candidacy.
IV.    Process for Hiring Committees :  Specific work on language dominated the discussion.  Hearn and Chenoweth read language and ideas suggested by the officers.  They clarified that, in the most recently distributed document, the bulleted statements in item 2 are from existing policy (with an added clarification in the last).  This particular language might not be particularly easy to change. Hearn suggested language enabling deans OR department chairs to submit committee membership forms.  The officers would then confer with division Senators.  This turned out to be problematic due to the large number of departments without department chairs.
It was also suggested by the officers that, at this point in the process, if the first stages appeared unsatisfactory, the officers would intervene and resolve the situation on a case by case basis.  The rest of the discussion focused on whether the department should be asked to go back and try again or to have the Senate Officers in consultation with the Office of Diversity and perhaps dean propose a modified committee instead.  At approximately the point in time when Winters was unequivocal in her support of the former, it was becoming the sense of the Senate that getting departments to understand appropriate committee composition was more important than speedy resolution.
As the time for the item expired, it was still not clear that there was agreement about who would do what in the initial stages of the process.
VI.  Good of the Order:   -  Setziol announced that the main item for communication with constituents was committee needs.
-   Capitolo distributed registration forms for the annual Automotive Technology golf tournament fundraiser.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:32

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